Steven LaChance Blog

It looks like people we recognize.

I keep coming back to this because cruelty rarely announces itself as something obvious or extreme. Most of the time, it shows up quietly, carried by ordinary people defending it. Neighbors justifying harm, violence, even death, as long as it’s aimed at someone they’ve decided is in the way. What has shaken me is realizing how often those people are ones I thought I knew.

Not because I believed they were flawless, but because I believed there was a line they wouldn’t cross.

Watching that line disappear has been deeply unsettling. I’ve seen cruelty excused as necessary, framed as the cost of stomping out a perceived enemy, often immigrants, onto whom fear and frustration have been piled. When force is treated as righteous simply because it targets a scapegoat, human life starts to feel negotiable.

I’m not going to excuse this from people I know or thought I knew. If you are cheering for cruelty, I’m going to step back. Not out of anger, but because that boundary matters to me. Once it’s crossed, I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.

History has been clear about this. When people learn to justify one form of violence or cruelty, they don’t stop there. The reasoning expands. The exceptions multiply. What was once unthinkable becomes acceptable.

I understand this in a personal way. As a gay man, I’ve lived with hate directed at who I am. I know how easily a group gets singled out, blamed, and stripped of protection. When hate is aimed at immigrants today, it doesn’t end there. It never does. A society that decides one group is acceptable to harm will always go looking for the next.

I’m not naïve about where that road leads. I know that people like me, and people I love, would eventually be standing in that line too.

That’s why this isn’t abstract for me. It’s personal. And it’s why I take this seriously, even when it costs me relationships. History shows that once cruelty is justified, it doesn’t stop. It keeps moving until it touches everyone.